July 4, 2006Independence, Government, God& Theocracy

>> To be
an adult (free & independent) in the world, you must be a child (obedient
and dependent) in God <<

F. Earle Fox

There are almost no patriotic speeches on the 4th of
July, indeed, I have hear only one or two in my lifetime. Patriotism,
except during wartime, is in bad odor. That is because we are not much
interested in whether our cause is just, but only that we win. Our minds
have been bent by the prevailing internationalism and pseudo-pluralism which
wants to dissolve all of us into a identity-less mass ruled from the Top down.
Meaning Global government. Meaning the victory of totalitarianism and the
death of freedom.

That will be the end of political freedom in any
meaningful sense, and is the very enemy for which our War for Independence was
fought.

But more important than patriotism per se is our
the Biblical foundation for freedom, universally understood by the
writers of our Constitution. Without that foundation, freedom cannot
survive. That is shown both historically and logically. As we
currently dissolve and erode our Biblical foundations, we are also measurably
losing our freedom.

Of course, that depends on one's definition of freedom.
The Biblical world has its own understanding of that term, quite different from
that of the Fallen world. The distinction is necessary to understanding
God and politics. (Click here: Freedom
.)

Christians had better begin doing their praying as a part
of celebrating the 4th. The Episcopal Church, at least, has Bible readings
appointed for Independence Day. But they are hardly ever read, and even
less understood.

So our Christian disconnect between God and political
freedom is the major cause of the continuing erosion of American political
freedom through increasingly centralized government, and of our incapacity to
spread honest freedom around the world.

The secular notion of "liberal democracy" promoted by
both political parties and by President Bush is neither liberal (does not
liberate) nor democratic (does not increase participation by the people), and does not advance
substantial freedom. It is only an illusion of freedom "from" -- which is
quite compatible with tyranny, and, in fact, almost guarantees it. 1984.

A. Ontological & Moral Stability - the Foundations of Freedom

If you understand the logic of dependency, you will
understand most of the Biblical doctrine of creation. Creatures are
dependent beings. Dependent in the most radical (root) sense, for their
very being.

Adulthood signifies a freedom, an independence, in making one's
own decisions, standing on one's own feet. After a certain age, most
children want to become free and independent of parental authority.

The journey of life (according to the Bible) is to move
from our (almost) total safety and nurturing in mother's womb, and then passing
through the
protection and authority of our fathers in the family nest, out on a long
life journey to the perfect nurturing safety of the Kingdom of God and the
perfect protection and authority of God Himself.

To get from alpha to omega requires a
Journey Perilous, out into a world full
of seemingly chance, random events, many of which could mean (and one of which
will for sure mean) our demise. Life is full of snares, traps, landmines,
poppy fields and other seductions, and in the end, we die. But, according to the Biblical
story, if we trust and obey God, if we follow Jesus, we will end up at the
throne of the Father, in His Kingdom where we do not die. We will have
accomplished the spiritual Journey Perilous.

But "Independence!" has become the battle cry of
mankind. We imagine ourselves to be independent from just about
everything possible. Not only from parents, but from morality, from God
Himself. That was the imagining of Adam and Eve as they ate
from the forbidden tree of independence from God. "You shall be as
God..."

The problem is that, when we leave God, we do not stop
being creatures who are dependent for our very existence. We do not become
like God. The serpent lied. Quite the opposite, we become
dependent beings trying to act like independent, autonomous decision-makers --
and make a poor show of it. Life on earth, with all its potential for
glory, is, for many, probably most, people a struggle to stay afloat, to keep
sane. Even with the best of opportunities, we are unable to stop hurting
ourselves and each other. Why did we think that without God it would or could be
otherwise?

The logic is clear.

In the Fall, we lose two absolutely vital things, the
warp and woof of life: 1. Ontological
security -- security of being; and, 2. moral direction, purpose, meaning. We stop depending
on God for our personal being, and for our sense of purpose and direction in
life, but the world without God cannot supply either of those two items.
So we are "on our own", scraping and scrabbling to put together some reasonable
substitute.

We in America, as we celebrate
our "freedom" this 4th of July, have lost all common spiritual, moral, or intellectual unity.
There is no consensus in America on any issue whatsoever.

Even Christians are deeply
divided on every major issue, with no hope, barring an act of God, for
resolution. And it is not at all clear that most Christians (forget about
the secular/pagan folk) either understand or want the needed act of God.
So we have no unity, and thus no credible testimony that Jesus comes from the
Father (see John 17).

Our "reasonable substitutes" never work because, as a
matter of simple logic, they cannot. I cannot supply my own security
of being, and neither can anyone or any group of also created beings. Ditto for
meaning, purpose, and moral direction. Created beings cannot do that, so we end up mostly pretending.
Westerners make leaps of blind, unsubstantiated faith that no sensible Christian
would ever do, trusting leaders and programs which have no intellectual, moral,
or spiritual credibility. Take, for example, the sex revolution, supported
by almost all so-called "health organizations". They honor our
illegitimate "right to do what we want" more than their obligation to protect
our health.

We are still dependent, but have nothing substantial on
which to depend. That leaves us terribly vulnerable. We therefore
pick each other, or things and circumstances in the world, to depend on and
obey. Idolatry.

But that means that we are not adults in the world, we
are still the children of those things upon which we depend and obey.
There is no way out of that vicious circle. It gets very vicious because,
depending on each other -- who are not dependable -- we get possessive,
resentful, and destructive. We eat each other up.

We are so wedded to our imagined independence that we
will commit any intellectual, moral, or spiritual atrocity to preserve our
delusion. Up to and including genocide. America is no exception.
56,000,000+ (and counting) babies dead..... in freedom loving America.

That is not adult behavior, that is childish, ignorant,
and/or evil behavior. Muslims do not stand on a higher moral ground, but
many of their critiques of the West are on target.

God knows that in order to be an adult in the world (to
be independent, standing on one's own feet, making truly free decisions), we
must be a child in Him. That is, we must secure our ontological stability
(the mothering gift) and our moral direction (the fathering gift) through Him,
the only place possible.

When we have those two things, we are, as Jesus said,
"born again". We are mothered and fathered by God, no longer by the world,
and so become children of God. And therein lies our true independence in
the world. To be independent in the world, we must be dependent on
(children of) God. "All other ground is sinking sand..."

Those whose being is rooted in the world, i.e., "of" the world, because of their inherent defensiveness are never able to be
"in" the real world, the world of personal relationship. So they are never
able to be substantially unified among themselves, only by coercion, deceit, or necessity
for survival.

But Christians (for example of the Roman Empire)
demonstrated lives dependent on God, not "of" the world, and therefore able to
be fully "in" the world -- the real world, the world of personal relationship.
And they were thus able to demonstrate an inner unity among themselves which the
pagan world could not produce. The Christians were demonstrating that
unity for which Jesus had prayed at the Last Supper, which would convince the
world that He had come from the Father (John 17).

B. Politics - in the world, but not
of it...

The same is true of politics. Our secular so-called
"liberal democracy" imagines that without God we can construct the Good Life,
the life of freedom and enjoyment of the world's opportunities. But the
20th century secular full-court press towards those goals resulted in
massive fragmentation and the most horrendous butchery and debauchery in
history (go to
www.hawaii.edu/powerkills ). By half way through the century, we had already slaughtered a
greater percentage of the human race than any other century.

Nothing we are currently doing at the beginning of the
21st suggests that, staying our course sans God, things will be
different. It looks more like we are creating our own Gotterdammerung --
end times self-destruction.
With geo-political strategies such as we are employing, who needs Satan?

The geo-political strategies have been the same ever
since the human race began to declare itself independent from God and
to define its own history. The rising concentrations of power in
local dictators in the ancient world led inevitably to universal power-struggle.
The strong shall, and ought to, rule the weak. Might makes right.

Nothing has changed.

The only serious intervention in that self-entrapment has
been
the rise of Judeo-Christian civilization -- which we Westerners are now trashing.

That intervention happened because those "born again" Christians found
that their security of being, their very lives, came from a Resource outside of
the Roman (or whatever) Empire, and that Ultimate Authority did likewise.
They also found that Ultimate Authority and Resource to show an utterly
astonishing care and love for us human beings, a thought that never crossed the
minds of pagan deities.

Christians in Rome, in other words, were having restored to them
those two items which had been lost in the Fall -- ontological security and
meaning, direction, purpose in life. That was why they invested themselves
in their neighbors and even in their enemies, often at the cost of their lives.
Many of them had lost all fear of death. Freedom.

But the pagans understood and admired people who faced death
bravely. That is why they so honored their military, and then came to hold
gladiatorial games. They liked to watch people die. They were
searching, I suppose, in their perverted manner, for the secret to death.
They wanted to be shown how themselves to die -- at least vicariously.

But then they saw a people who lived through death quite
differently, who were willing to lay down their lives to save others rather than
to prove themselves better than others, people whose triumph was in a Lord and
Savior who never raised a sword to win a convert, who had led the way by
laying down His life for them, and who, from outside the created cosmos, was
calling even them, the pagans.

In the ancient world, neither Jew, Christian, nor pagan held to our modern
foolishness about separation of Church and State. Caesar knew that "Jesus
is Lord" was a political claim, that the Christians meant that Jesus was Lord
over him, that he, Caesar, and his empire, belonged to Jesus. And Caesar,
in some instances, returned the favor, claiming himself to be a god, and
everybody else subject to him. He, at some level, understood what was at
stake.

The Biblical understanding of civil government begins
with God being the creator, owning the whole of the
cosmos, including emphatically, the political part of it. God alone is
the fountain of all authority, and is therefore sovereign over all. No
exceptions. (Secular or pagan folks, to escape this dilemma, must show a
secular or pagan foundation for objective morality. See
Law & Grace in
Imago Dei.)

That means, as the preamble to our
Declaration of Independence
recognizes, that the role of civil government is to administer those laws
already given by God, not to invent their own contrary laws. That is historically why
the Decalogue is prominently portrayed in many of our courts, including the
Supreme Court. America, including Supreme Court decisions, had once
officially recognized the sovereignty of God over all things.

The Biblical view also means, as a matter of logic, that any government not submitted
to the law of God is, either by ignorance or by rebellion, an outlaw government.
National governments are to God (more or less) as state or provincial governments are to a
national or federal government. The higher trumps the lower in matters
under its jurisdiction. For God, that means everything.

Such a thought seems outlandish and even dangerous to the
modern mind -- which is the victim of two fatal mistakes.

1. We are taught a false notion of
pluralism, that everybody's view
is right -- at least for that person. No one really believes that because
it is logically impossible to act consistently on it. But it works as part
of the war against Biblical religion -- because so few Christians have their
intellects intact enough to respond with forceful reason.

2. We are taught that morality is not dependent on
worldview, that morality is inherent, as the secularists believe, in the person
himself, whatever the worldview. We are valuable just because we are.
That is not a defensible view, and is routinely violated by those who profess
it. But it does render the Biblical view morally irrelevant in the debate.
Nevertheless, the Biblical view has the
logical
evidence on its side.

The secular/pagan (Fallen)
world, in other words, has neither ontological nor moral stability (and therefore always leads to
death), and the salvation of the world requires the recovery of those
qualities -- which God alone can give, and was indeed giving through His
Christian people.

As the Declaration spells out, our rights come from God,
which is what makes them unalienable. Any right originating in civil
government is easily alienable because it can be withdrawn by the civil government
that gave it. That is the very foundation
of autocracy and tyranny.

Those secular/pagan people, therefore, who want to be free,
possessing unalienable rights with respect to their government, are asking
for something which can be had only at the cost of something they are unwilling
to grant -- the sovereignty of God over civil government. And that is, of
course, a theocracy, being ruled by the law of God.

The paradox, then, is that political freedom can be had
only
under the sovereignty of a creator God who loves His creatures, who guarantees
their standing before any civil government, and who calls to account all civil
governments for their behavior towards their citizens. The founding
fathers, probably to a man, understood and supported that principle -- with their
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

D. Political Freedom: Two dangers, and the solution .

There are two dangers. The
first is churchocracy,
government by a particular church. That is to be distinguished from
theocracy, rule by God, under His laws. The
first amendment to our constitution
effectively forbids a churchocracy, not a
theocracy. It is a separation of
Church and State, two human institutions, not of God and State. God owns
both institutions, and draws boundaries for both so they can work creatively
together to protect the freedom of the citizens.

Particular religions (of all sorts) have their place in society
because of the nature of the honest pluralism guaranteed by God (as in, "Come,
let us reason together..." Isaiah 1:18). Everyone is invited to
reason with God. That is precisely where the people of God give their
testimony -- or, with a healthy Church, would be doing so. Honest pluralism does not tell
us that all views are right. It says that all views have the right to
express themselves in public debate, and that the debate is to test which view
is indeed right for the public policy in question. Views are plural, but
truth is singular. God wins His case in public debate, all or
nothing. (See Isaiah 43, or I Kings 18:17 ff. Or Paul's journeys.)

So all religions, philosophies, political parties have
the right to express their views in public, whether in the media or the pulpit
or via elected representatives. This freedom will never survive except
under a God such as the Biblical God. Neither secularism nor paganism can
support this kind of freedom.

The second danger is, once agreeing that God
is sovereign ruler, the possibility of latching onto a false God, a pretender. The consequences of
worshipping a false God can be disastrous for the political (as well as
spiritual) life of a people.
If God is imagined as unloving, arbitrary, tyrannical, unwilling to
reason together with His people, then civil government will almost always follow
that same style.

However, one cannot decide on the reality of a God by whether
or not an alleged God is "nice" toward us. We must search to see
whether there is logical, empirical, and/or historical evidence for such a God having
revealed Himself -- whatever His character. When the debate is based on
whose view can produce the best evidence, then the public discussion of religion
becomes an intelligent and reasonable enterprise. Otherwise we are left to
bias and speculation which is rightly ignored by the public.

In any event, the problem is not whether the freedom of
the people can survive with God "interfering", but quite the opposite,
whether the freedom of a people can survive without God as sovereign.
The evidence, both historical and logical, shows, I think, no, it cannot survive
without God.

The two unfortunate results of our investigations could
be no God at all, or a malevolent God. The only good result, i.e.,
supporting the life and freedom of us creatures, would be a loving Creator.
With either no God or an unloving God, we are in unremediable trouble.

So it is worth the trouble to learn what a loving God
would look like should we meet one.

We would do well to look at the examples of those
Christians in the early centuries, through the ages, and recently -- who are
demonstrating through their lives the power of being and authority of God, who
are dedicating their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause
of Christ. And we would do well also to see whether or not there is
objective evidence to support their devotion to such a God.

That is what the Road to Emmaus is about. The
evidence, to put it mildly, is overwhelming. We need to restore our
intellectual credibility so that we can begin to marshal the evidence which lies
all over the map. Then we will be able to stand for the intellectual
credibility of God, that our God is more interested in the truth than in "winning".

There is not a single area of inquiry where, in a fair
contest on a level playing field, the Biblical
view does not come out on top. But it gets better than that. When we
trust and obey
God, truth wins no matter the tilt of the playing field. It gets a lot
nastier that way (crucifixion), but God holds the intellectual, moral, and spiritual high
ground, and is inviting His people to stand there with Him. And, as
Himself, at any
cost to ourselves. When the truth wins, everyone wins.

There is no reasonable sense of freedom apart from the
two stabilities which only God can supply, ontological (personal) and moral.
They are the foundations for all genuine freedom, both "from" and "for".

The
Christian Church must recover its intellectual integrity and get back into the
public arena. We have a winning case to present. But it begins with
our own honest and faithful worship of the God whom we should be proclaiming in public.

>> To be
an adult (free & independent) in the world, you must be a child (obedient
and dependent) in God <<